As a member of Sisters in Crime and havig a fairly close local chapter, we have guest speakers each month, alternating mystery authors and "professionals". This month our guest speaker was Nina Bruhns, Sr. Editor of the Entangled Suspense line. Entangled Publishing (previously Dead Sexy) offers a variety of ways to get books with a romantic element in them, ranging from 20 to 80% romance to suspense/mystery/thriller/whatever line you choose, published digitally (they aren't doing print books because they believe that the print books and brick and mortar stores are going by the wayside). Nina really only looks at suspense or thrillers but there are editors for each of their lines and publicists that go along with that. While Nina was talking about publishing through entangled, she also mentioned audio books. She said she listens to audio books all the time when she is traveling. Of course Amazon is the forerunner in this area as they have bought out audible.com which is the leader in selling audiobooks. I know several places audiobooks are used- the state libraries use them for the blind patrons but they are still using bulky cassette machines with the books being on tape. Audible.com will now sell audiobooks on amazon.com and itunes.com as well as on their main site audible.com.
I wasn't really thinking of doing audiobooks at this moment but I need some sales and I figure - adding audiobooks can't hurt. So I went to the website and decided to see if it was a simple process, like the KDP is, or how much time it would take to get an audiobook produced.
So far, the process isn't that difficult but there are a few things you must do before actually set up your profile and start putting your book out there for auditions and a finished product.
When you sign onto the website, the first thing you will see is a big search box kind of in the middle of the purple colored box. You need to search for your book by title and if there is more than one book with your title, find your book. Claim your book as your book (I own this book or This is my book - something to that affect). Once you have claimed your book, you will be asked to sign in to your amazon account, which most of us alreadyh have established as we have posted books on the KDP program or we have made purchases on amazon.com. After you sign in, you will be asked to set up the book's profile and to upload your sample for auditions. I would recommend loading the first chapter, or if it is fairly short, the first two chapters. I uploaded the second chapter of Finally Home and the auditions I've asked for and gotten back I realized that my chapter 2 wasn't the exact chapter from the book (apparently I had used Chapter 2 for a workshop or reading of some sort prior to really completing the book). It's okay that this isn't the completed chapter as you are just giving them a sample to read from to see how they handle the content of your book.
Once you have completed the profile and uploaded your sample for auditions, then the fun begins. This can be a very time consuming part of the production of the audiobook process unless you narrow your search down. When you get to the "auditions page", you are informed that there are something like 10,930 narrator files to search from. There are options to narrow the field down. So for my book, I opted to narrow down to genre, gender and payment type - genre - teens - this is my target audience; gender - female (since my characters are basically female and are teenaged girls); and payment type - royalty split. The payment type should be indicated when you set up your book's profile and you have 2 options - you can pay the narrator a straight fee (this is based on hours to produce the book and can range from $50 per produced hour on up the gamut to over $1000 per produced hour. The second option is a 50-50 split royalty on every book sold through audible.com, itunes. com and amazon.com - Audible will set the retail price (there is a formula based on number of hours the book takes to produce to get the price). Since I don't personally have over several hundred dollars to pay someone to narrate the book, I opted for the royalty split option. To me this works out best. Anyway, after narrowing down what or who I would like to narrate the book, I dropped from 10,930 to 79 options. The next thing to do is listen to the sample narrations that are available. I found four or five within the first 3 pages of samples (there are usually 12 per page and I only 7 pages to go through), and basically within the first couple of pages that I was impressed with.
After listening to the sample narrations, then I started checking the profiles of the ones I liked and sent them each a message indicatig that I was looking for a narrator for my book, Finally Home, and if they would be interested in auditioning for me. At the time of this writing, I had requested auditions from four ladies and had received two back. The first one I received, she wasn't too bad but she read the main text very quickly - I almost felt like she was on a speeding bullet. She did get Emma Louise's personality in her reading rather well, so that was a good thing. The second one I received, I really liked how she got the gist of Kelly's character but she seemed a bit too southern (yes, I know Emma Louise is southern and all but she's not quite that southern). Basically I have two good readings of my sample text but neither are quite right.
After I get the other two back, I'll either search for more readings, maybe narrow it down to only females and payment type as opposed to genre and see what I come up with. It may actually take the longest to find the right narrartor for the book than anything else. I'll probably update the status on my blog as I get closer to getting an audiobook produced of Finally Home.
That's my experience so far with ACX and creating an audiobook to sell and hopefully start seeing some profits on my book sales.
Since it is almost Valentine's day and this is the last of the "giving holiday season", how about give your loved ones a good book to read or listen to. Pick an ebook or audiobook or even a signed copy of one of the authors from this group and show them you love them. I have one Melonberry bookworm left and can't find that yarn at any of our local Walmarts, so in honor of Valentine's day, I will do a drawing from the comments on this posting for that particular bookworm. All you have to do is comment and leave your email address in the coment (in the format of email addy (at) whatever (dot) com if you don't want to be spammed) and I'll do a random drawing on Friday, the 15th for the bookworm. Don't worry if you live outside the United States as you a re eligible also since the cost of sending overseas isn't really that high. Good luck to all and see you in the postings - E :)
-------------------
Elysabeth Eldering
Author of Finally Home, a middle grade/YA mystery
Ms. Eldering is the award-winning author of the Junior Geography Detective Squad (JGDS), 50-state, mystery, trivia series. Her stories "Train of Clues" (available in print and as an ebook on kindle), "The Proposal" (available as an ebook), "Tulip Kiss" (available as an ebook), and "Butterfly Halves", all placed first, second, or runner up in various contests to include two for Armchair Interviews and two for Echelon Press (Fast and ... themed type contests). Her story "Bride-and-Seek" (available as an ebook) was selected for the South Carolina Writers' Workshop (SCWW) anthology, the Petigru Review. She also has written several other short stories for contests including the second place winning story, "Zombies Amuck", and "La Cave". Ms. Eldering makes her home in upper state South Carolina and loves to travel, read, cross stitch and crochet. When she's not busy with grown children still at home, working her full-time job as a medical transcriptionist or participating in virtual classroom visits, she can be found at various homeschool or book events and festivals promoting her writing.
You can find more information about the JGDS series on the JGDS website or follow the JGDS blog.
You can find out more about Elysabeth and her other writings on her website or follow her blog.
Tips for Writing Engaging Romance
I asked Romance Author Amber Lea Easton to sizzle up our
blog today with some tips on writing romance. This is a growing market with all
types of sub-genres, allowing the new to experienced writer to spread their
wings and add some love to their book.
With Valentine’s Day only a few days away and lots of
inspiration peeking around corners…maybe this little guest post will give you
some new manuscript ideas.
Tips for Writing Engaging Romance
By Amber Lea Easton
All novels, regardless of genre, need captivating characters
and hooks that pull the readers into the story.
Romance, in particular, is a character driven, highly charged
genre. In all great love stories, there
needs to be an emotional connection, not just between the characters, but
between them and the readers as well.
How do we novelists write engaging/believable romance without being cliché,
crass or cheesy? After all, emotion can
go over-the-top if we’re not careful.
Flawed
characters. No one is perfect, even if
the hero looks like a Greek God and makes you drool. In order for the reader to connect, there
must be a vulnerability that makes the character human. Why root for someone if we think they’re
superficial or mean?
Attraction. You may
think that’s easy to write, but it isn’t.
Saying, “wow, he’s hot” is lame. Think about it...when you’re attracted
to someone, don’t you have a physical reaction?
When I write attraction, I don’t tell the readers I show them through
nonverbal cues. In Riptide, when Lauren
first interacts with Noah, I write, “little earthquakes of desire rocked
through her until she thought she’d fall off the stool.” For attraction to jump off the page, the
reader needs to feel what’s happening, imagine being on that stool and talking
with that man. Non-verbal physical
reactions are key to engaging the reader in this area, which we all know is a
key element of any romance novel.
Conflict. Nothing worth having comes easily, isn’t that the
saying? Even though there is the attraction, there needs to be a conflict to
overcome whether it’s trust issues, betrayal, or, because I write suspense, a
life and death situation. Even though I
have the suspense in my novels that provides a natural plot conflict, there are
still human conflicts that need to be worked out to make the characters
believable. We all have baggage--past
heartbreaks, abandonment issues and what not--so the characters need those as
well.
Sexual tension and sex.
The sex needs to come at a natural time in the evolution of the
relationship, just like in real life. Now this timing varies from story to
story depending on character development, but the readers truly need to be
saying, “will they ever just rip each other’s clothes off already” before I
give them satisfaction. Writing sexual
tension is fun...prolonging the actual act, building up to it...not only do the
readers shift in the chairs with anticipation but so do the characters, which
makes it all that much more rewarding when the sex scenes finally happen.
Engaging romance readers is all about tugging at their heartstrings
and making the characters as believable as possible. We all want to be rooting for the happy
ending and smiling when we turn the last page.
Amber Lea Easton is a multi-published fiction and nonfiction
author. For twenty years, she's worked in the fields of journalism and
advertising with a brief detour into the financial
industry. Although she holds a BA in Communications &
Journalism, she is a perpetual student of life who enjoys taking courses on a
wide variety of subjects when time allows. Smart is sexy, according
to Easton, which is why she writes about strong female characters who have
their flaws and challenges, but who ultimately persevere.
Easton currently lives with her two teenagers in the
Colorado Rocky Mountains where she gives thanks daily for the gorgeous view
outside her window. She finds inspiration from traveling, the people she meets,
nature and life’s twists and turns. At the end of the day, as long as she's
writing, she considers herself to be simply "a lucky lady liv'n the dream."
The World of Ink Network is
touring author Amber Lea Easton’s contemporary romantic suspense
(adventure) novel, Riptide throughout
February and March 2013. You can find out more about Amber Lea Easton, Riptide and
her World of Ink Author/Book Tour at http://tinyurl.com/a2azncg
Visit
Amber at:
Website - http://www.amberleaeaston.com
Twitter - @MtnMoxieGirl
Writing as nostalgia: on the origins of fiction
It starts small, as something
inchoate. You don't know why you're
drawn to a topic, a setting, a subject.
There's just something compelling--a magnetic field that pulls at you as
you begin to type. Much of my work
starts with this kind of magnetism. As
the subject begins to come together, the streets turn into New York City in the
1980s, or Grossinger's hotel in the 1940s. While the plotting process is careful left brain activity - a engineering styled construction, the themes, the plots, the characters that inhabit my fiction tend to be driven by instinct and nostalgia.
Something in me wants to explore the pain, the correspondences, the
connections. The whole process of
writing, fiction and poetry at least, for me has an undercurrent of nostalgia
that is becoming ever clearer as I move deeper into my third novel, an
exploration of creative, love, loss and time travel through the DNA wormhole
that links the 1940s and 2012.
The more I think about it, the more I
realise that this is a motivating force for many authors, not just myself. We need to find a place in our lives where something has been left behind, to explore a notion that bugs us, and then, like a grain of sand in an
oyster, to pearlise it and create something that is no longer personal and
lost, but universal and found. I've been
exploring this notion, not only in my own work as I aim my fingers into the
past, but in the work of others as I traverse literary landscapes that work
best when they invoke a similar nostalgia in me. The sense of loss that motivates the
characters is familiar and current to the modern reader regardless of whether
the book is set in Victorian England or a mythical planet in the constellation
of Kasterborous.
Reflecting on the past, and responding to that reflection by exploring its meaning to the present and that
disassociative, uncomfortable sensation of not being able to ever get back to
that point, creates a visceral sensation that is empathetic and powerful. There's something there that you have to pick
at. Something Proustian in the taste of
those Madeleines, or the smell of that long forgotten perfume.
It's suprisingly painful, both as reader
and as writer, to go to that place, and explore the sensations, knowing that
this is all we have left of the past.
Bringing it back to life, at the same time as we distance ourselves from
it through irony and new found understanding, creates a very post-modern type of novel. Noticing and loving this sensation, however
uncomfortable, in modern literature, is a most pleasurable experience that connects writing with reading.
How does nostalgia inform your own work, both as reader and writer?
.
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